Rebel Becks Is A Punk Rocker
by Illusive Writings
Summary: From a prompt on castlefanficprompt. "While snooping around her closet, Castle finds some mementos of Beckett's wild child fase, like old punk and heavy metal bands t-shirts, concert tickets stubs, photos and anything in between." Fluffy trip down the memory lane


From a prompt on castlefanficprompt. "_While snooping around her closet, Castle finds some mementos of Beckett's wild child fase, like old punk and heavy metal bands t-shirts, concert tickets stubs, photos and anything in between_."

But considering I was in love with the whole idea of the CBGB since I saw that episode in Gilmore Girls and I cried when it closed and I never had the chance to see it, I'm adding a little bit of meta here. References to Patti Smith's final concert at CBGB in October 2006. And this whole thing came out because I found the bootleg for that concert. Also, first attempt at Castle fanfics. I write about Star Wars usually, this is totally out of my comfort zone, except for the subject.

Set in Season 5, after Secret's Safe With Me but before Reality Star Struck.

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**Rebel Becks Is A Punk Rocker**

He wasn't snooping around her closet. He was looking for a t-shirt he knew he had left at her place the other week, just something to sleep in, but he didn't know where she had put it.

And not wanting to bother her while she was showering, he was looking for it by himself: rummaging into her closet, through her clothes and other stuff.

Even if he had already found said t-shirt, he kept going through the infinite array of induments Kate Beckett owned, recognizing some of those she wore at work, some other she used to wear around the house and even stuff he had never seen, like an old, tattered and definitely abused X-Men t-shirt turned into a tank top. He smiled when he saw that poor thing, neglected nearly at the bottom of her closet, possibly forgotten. It looked like it had survived the bombing of her apartment and the subsequent incursion of the fire fighters, but it was barely wearable and he was sure she kept it only as a keepsake.

But there was something beneath it. A plain cardboard box, almost hidden under a pile of old shirts, like the X-Men one, too brittle to wear.

Castle smiled mischievously at the thought it might be the famous box from her "kinky past" she had mentioned a some time earlier and since he could hear the shower still running, he decided to attempt a blitz to the box before Kate could get out of the bathroom and get annoyed with his snooping.

The first thing he noticed when he pulled it out of the closet was the weight: that box was heavy, and the reason for its weight was evident when he pulled the lid away. There was a black leather motorcycle jacket inside. The leather was thick and supple, with creases here and there due to heavy use. He couldn't help but notice the presence of some rows of square steel studs on the shoulders and on the lower hem, clearly added by a not so expert hand, as some were missing, creating a messy pattern all over the jacket. There were pins all over the lapels, some of them looked like vintage pins from the 70s, from long deceased bands like The Dead Boys and Sex Pistols, but the bigger surprise came when he turned it around and saw a huge back patch with the cover art of The Clash's London Calling album on it.

Wow, Kate Beckett liked classic punk rock!

Careful not to tear out more studs or ruin the already old pins, he placed the jacket on the bed beside him and went back to the contents of the box. There were t-shirts from more or less famous bands, some he recognized, like Pearl Jam, Metallica - oh, he could totally picture young Kate headbangning the hell out of Master Of Puppets -, Blondie, The Clash (again), a _signed_, evidently never used Bruce Springsteen's white t-shirt from the Born In The USA era, two different designs for The Ramones and one of The Pretenders, Kiss and stuff like that… and some he didn't recognize like S.O.D., Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, Death - who the hell could call a band _Death?_ - he wondered and The Exploited. He was a little bit let down by the total absence of some classic rock acts like Led Zeppelin and AC/DC, but he hoped those shirts were too battered by heavy use even to act as a keepsake.

But when he finally reached beneath the last Nine Inch Nails tank top, this one in a much better condition than the X-Men one, he found a small treasure made of concert ticket stubs and photos taken probably at said concerts.

There were probably fifty stubs if not more, of different ages and venues and he picked a handful of them. Some of them were so old that she had probably gone to said concerts with her parents, and he was slightly shocked to see a really, really old one from Peter Gabriel's Secret World tour at Madison Square Garden, dated 1994 when she was 14. Rummaging a little more he found two identical stubs, probably for her parents. He chuckled at the idea of 14 years old Kate Beckett going with her parents to that kind of concert, but he couldn't figure if she had to go with them because they didn't want her to stay at home alone or if she did want to come with them because she actually liked Peter Gabriel's music. Considering the contents of the box, he found it hard to believe it was the latter option, but the evolution of her musical tastes, as far as he knew, definitely pointed to that direction.

He'd have to ask her for a confirmation.

He marveled at the amazing "archeological findings" of that box, it was like opening a time capsule made of names on thick paper. There was a number of underground acts that with the years became bigger and bigger, like a really old one for Green Day, two for The Offspring, four tickets for Blondie (she did like the new wave scene, apparently), a number for Patti Smith, two more for Bruce Springsteen and more and more for heavy metal acts he had absolutely never heard of, like Hypocrisy, Wintersun, Dark Tranquillity, Lacuna Coil (those, he had heard. And appreciated… the frontgirl more than the music but… you know…). There was even one that came from Ukraine, at least he thought so, since it was written in cyrillic. The name and date were obviously unreadable to him, but he found it cute that she kept all those mementos of her rebel side.

Suddenly he remembered something Madison had said when they had met two years before: that Kate was indeed a rebel. But he'd never picture Kate Beckett being _so_ rebellious. He never thought that Rebel Becks was a punk rocker. Or a metalhead, to be sincere. There were pictures of her at various ages, probably from teenage, considering the height and build, to mid-twenties, some of them he could actually match to other pictures of her he had seen around. One was definitely taken during her time as a rookie cop, he recognized the tight, forced smile and the airstyle from the picture Royced had showed him, and she looked like she was having a lot of fun somewhere in a dark room with the only light coming from the stage behind her. The flash of the camera made the studs on her jacket, the same jacket that now lay beside him, shine. It was weird, funny and refreshing.

He had been right, that night in LA. Kate Beckett was a mistery he was never going to solve, and he liked it that way.

Then, while he went through more photos, he found one stapled to a ticket. At the sight of the name and the date and the venue, he almost chocked out a loud whimper. October 15th, 2006. CBGB. The final concert of the legendary club. Patti Smith performing on stage some of her music but mostly covers from bands that had shaped the legend of the club and that on the same stage had found a trampline for their music career. Smith included.

A concert he himself had gone to. He had ditched Gina at a posh party, changed clothes during the cab ride and got in just before Patti had started the first song. He remembered a girl jumping over him during "Blitzkrieg Bop", kissing him on the cheek then jumping off to go back to her business, as if on a dare. All he could recall of the girl in question were the fishnet tights and black combat boots that circled his waist for the briefest moment before she went away. He never saw her face, when he had realized what had happened, the girl had disappeared in the crowd. He went back to the concert but kept being distracted by the memory. It still haunted him to that day.

Anyway, behind the ticket there was a picture stapled, of Kate and Lanie, both dressed in a very uncharacteristic way, considering how he was used to see them both in professional and domestic environments. Kate wore the same jacket of the other picture, but sported longer hair and her natural color this time, not as long as she had it now, but somewhere in between. It was definitely taken before she had changed hairstyle around the time he had met her. Man, she was hot: dark heavy make up, a t-shirt with the CBGB logo that he handn't found in the box and short tartan skirt…

And fishnets and combat boots.

For a moment, he went back to that night, the amazing concert and the bittersweet ending, knowing that the club would have closed right after it, that there was no way he'd sneak out ever again to see a random underground rock band there like he had done for years. His first fake document had served him to get into the CBGB to see The Clash when he was sixteen after all, the sense of nostalgia had hit him pretty bad when he had learned that the club was to be closed.

And that incredible, random act during that song, like a blitz on him. He was sure the girl was either drunk or had acted that way on a dare and knowing that both Beckett and Lanie were there too made it easy to speculate that she could have been both high and on a dare to do it. And that he'd been the random lucky guy to be the subject of such dare.

Or maybe he was only the bigger one, the only one that wouldn't have fallen on the ground taken by surprise if a petite girl/woman jumped over him in the middle of a rock concert.

"I see you've found your shirt."

Her voice startled him and he jumped on the bed, nearly dropping the now almost empty box to the floor. "Yep…" he replied, the tone of his voice much higher than he had intended.

Castle looked up at her, wrapped in a bathrobe, hair still dripping. He hadn't heard the shower stop and she had taken him by surprise. As always.

"So… saw something you like?" she asked, moving the jacket a little farther and sitting beside him.

He nodded. Mostly, I saw you have a punk rock past."

"Yeah well… I had a kind of a wild child phase, but you already know that." she took one of the pictures from high school in her hands and smiled at it. It was an old picture of her and Madison, sprawled on a couch, both in what looked like their PJs, as if it was taken at a slumber party, tongues out in their best Gene Simmon's impersonation giving the middle finger to the person taking the picture. "This was taken by my mom."

"Really?"

She nodded. "Yeah… I had just received my letter from Stanford, I had been accepted and Maddy had come over for an inpromptu slumber party to celebrate. My mom asked us to act as crazy as we could for one picture because Stanford wasn't a place for crazy and that's what we got. A month later Maddy and I had a fallout and we didn't speak until we met again two years ago. Crazy, isn't it?"

"I think it's cute. By the way you never told me you were at CBGB final concert." he said, handing her the ticket stub and the picture.

"Well, you never asked. Lanie and I were heartbroken when the news it would be closed broke so we decided to be there at any cost. I had to cover double shifts for a month to get that night free. And she did move some favours too. You were there too?"

"Ditched Gina at one of her posh parties for boring people. It was terrible to say goodbye to that place."

"Yep, I had my fair share of amazing memories at that place. After my mom died, I used to go there quite often, even only for a beer and some music, didn't matter who was playing."

"Even hardcore punk?"

"Oh the hardcore punk nights were my favourites! Loud music and all, I could forget some of my problems."

There was a moment of silence and they both stared at the picture in her hands. "You know, that night I did something absolutely stupid, just because it was the last CBGB night and I was kind of drunk."

_Oh, here it comes…_ he thought, but didn't interrupt her and let her go on at her pace.

"I had too many drinks and not enough food to dampen the effects and then Lanie spotted this huge guy with the most amazing ass I had ever seen standing not ten feet from us watching the show. I think it was the Ramones medley, you remember that?"

Castle nodded, silent again.

"She told me that if I jumped over him and kissed him she'd buy me another drink. I put my beer down and did it, on a whim. Damn, that guy was big, kind of something like you and I wasn't wearing high heels that night."

"Yeah, fishnets and combat boots, if I remmeber correctly." he replied. "You kind of missed my groin by mere inches, you know."

Kate froze in place. "How do you… Don't tell me I jumped over you that night!" she squealed, panicking a little bit.

"Oh definitely. I when I say you missed my groin by inches, I'm not joking. Those boots could have destroyed my ability to have more children, you know."

"Holy cow…" she looked down at the photo and laughed, loudly. "I can't believe it!"

"It's crazy yeah… even after nearly ten years that memory kind of haunts me and now… wow. It's all I can say, it was really kismet."

Kate smiled and kissed him on the cheek, like that night all those years ago. "The only bad thing about that is that all that jumping around made me kind of sick and I missed Sheena Is A Punk Rocker because I was throwing up in the bathroom." she said, with a hint of regret in her voice.

"You really like that song, huh?"

"Yep. Maddy used to say it was my theme song. She always changed the lyrics to Rebel Becks' A Punk Rocker. It amazed me how she could make it fit."

He thought back at the song and nodded. "Well, it fits, with a little bit of tweakening of the English grammar but it fits." he stated. "Come on, let's get all this stuff back in its box, I'd hate to lose any of its contents."

She nodded. "You do that, I'm going to dry my hair." she stood up and started walking back to the bathroom, when one of her wicked thoughts coursed through her very naughty mind. "Then I'll show you how rebel Rebel Becks can be."

Castle remained still for a long moment, contemplating her words in silence before hurrying at placing everything in the box again to free the bed from any obstacle. He had no idea what was going to happen, what she wanted to do to him or even what she meant with _rebel_, but all he could do was patiently waiting.

So he did.

He'll never look at a black leather motorcycle jacket the same way anymore.

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_Ok, right, got it out of my system. Back at writing Star Wars and Batman. I hope. Oh goodness I hope it doesn't suck. BTW, thanks to Alessandra for the beta reading. Love ya girl! Ah, just a small detail: I have no idea if Peter Gabriel ever performed at Madison Square Garden in 1994, but considering how big was the stage for that tour, I think he could have played there. I couldn't find any news about the place of the concert, only the date. July 1994, I double checked. And before you ask, yes I know and listen to all those bands. Even Death. _


End file.
